The "one man show" of a protest theologian

We have said a good deal about why we cannot conduct certain academic-intellectual debates in Türkiye as they deserve. What looks like debate is in fact squabbling, a brawl in which whoever shouts the loudest can drown out the other voices, and whoever has the greater capacity for uproar can silence the others. Worse still, those who watch these squabbles, these brawls, these shouts also suppose that a debate is taking place, and part of the masses choose their sides in favor of those with the louder shouts, the greater verbal clutter, the better brawling skills. It was not said in vain: do not argue with fools, lest the others be unable to tell the difference between you. Social media environments have made this situation even more inextricable

than it was.

The subject, historicism, is one that requires a fairly high intellectual level, but the manner in which the one who appears to be the head of one side conducts the debate amounts to nothing more than cheap bullying. Even his bullying is cheap, because it lacks the code, the manner and the courage that bullying requires.

We said "lumpen," in the sense of lacking some of the most basic knowledge and awareness that historicism requires, and in the video show he made in reply he carried the matter all the way to abjection. He reeled it off, cursed and vomited, got up in a rage and hit the very bottom of nonsense.

His state is that of drunkards who, having found nothing reasonable to say with a sober head to someone they are angry with, drink and drink until they are drunk, then stand before their window and vomit out, in curses, all the malignant feelings, rancor and hatred inside them. He ends in arabesque, saying to people from whom he has heard even a small criticism of themselves, "You have eaten it all up, will the world be left to you? Get off our backs, what more do you want? Go plant a tree, do something useful."

Who is it who ate, who finished it all, from whom did he take and eat? Who are you, are you the person to ask this question? What benefit have you ever been to this country, this nation, humanity, that you suddenly pose as the humanist of the world, take the world's virtues as your property and lie on top of them, and show off to others? Do you realize what you are saying? You do not. Evidently you have lost your mind. Is it with this manner that you will do theology, interpret the Qur'an? Is it with this nonsense that you will found a new theology? You have not an ounce of respect, love, loyalty for the society you came out of. You have become thoroughly alienated from the faith, customs and traditions of the people of the country you live in.

When we said of someone who says "the root of Sunni theology must be doused with acid" that, first of all, his historical consciousness is weak, we stayed within the limits of what was said; we made not the slightest insinuation about the person's character, or about his other circumstances outside the debate, whom we suppose we are debating. Imagining that we could conduct a debate, we merely ask a question from within the limits of the debate. The question we asked our counterfeit Luther, who dreams of a protest Islam, is a question that came entirely out of this sentence: one who does not know or recognize the nature of tradition, who supposes it can be changed with theoretical language games and desk-bound activities, and who, moreover, imagines he can do this job by standing right on the opposite bank, has before anything else missed the very historicity he has taken upon himself to claim. You have become a stranger to the history you yourself live in, so how will you grasp the historicity of the Qur'an, of seventh-century Arab society?

This diagnosis of the situation, the posing of this question, requires no other insinuation. One who deserves this question is, at best, called a downright ignoramus. Listen a bit longer and they decide he is out of his mind. Listen a bit longer and they say that every moment spent trying to understand him is a pity. Can there be anything you can talk about with this manner, with this abjection?

Our protest theologian, who cannot tolerate being asked how one who has missed the nature of historicity can practice historicism, and who moreover has been lamenting for years the absence of freedom of thought, got up in great fury at so modest a remark and tried to rain down his wrath. By video. In a perfect one-man-show performance. Opening the talk, as he always does, by putting forward, in a half-baked drama, his illness, which he has used since the day I got to know him. He has a bowel problem. In every conversation of his I have come across and in every video talk, it would be incomplete if he did not mention it. Now we understand that this is part of his customary drama routine.

When I first met him more than twenty years ago at a symposium where we were in the same session, he told me about this illness and then said he feared my criticisms greatly. I will not lie, I approached him with compassion and wished him recovery. As far as I remember, I expressed the essence of my usual attitude: "Why on earth would you be afraid, have I ever been seen attacking anyone's personal rights? What we do is help one another to come a little closer to the truth, to live thought as a feast among friends, to share beauties. However much we may think differently, without losing sincerity, is it worth breaking or hurting a friend for it? Is a difference of opinion among friends even worth mentioning?"

Those who know me know that until now I have hardly ever criticized anyone by name. My concern has never been persons; it has been ideas, attitudes and stances. Yes, we establish a friendship on the partnership of being friends of the truth, and the first condition of this friendship is to love one another and to respect one another's rights. Falling into disagreement while trying to find the truth does not require us to hurt one another. If you are a true friend of truth you know its etiquette; if you are sincere you will not miss it. Provided only that you have not fallen into marketing the positions you gained from friendship of truth to the enemies of truth, like sophists or hedonists.

As I noticed from what I watched afterwards, our counterfeit Luther mentions that illness at the start of every talk. We all get a little ill, our relatives get ill, we have personal problems as we pass through the wheel of fortune. But I have never seen anyone include his illnesses and personal problems in every talk as he does. It is an illness; what can we say, may God grant a speedy recovery.

In the days when he was being lynched because of his delusions, which are supposed to be historicist thought, I preferred not to enter these subjects at all, so as not to join that lynch mob. At the same time, even if they were delusions, the regard for our past greeting kept me from criticizing him just when he was in such a difficult position. Because those who attacked him were no more innocent than he. Those brandishing the machetes of takfir in the name of Ahl al-Sunna were seeking neither right nor truth.

But now there is no lynching directed at him. On the contrary, he himself talks by cursing, swearing at, judging whoever comes before him, convicting and executing without trial. And this time he has leaned his back on the modernist ideological power of Türkiye. That power whose record is full of massacres committed in the name of an utterly empty, stupid modernist ideology. Even when saying "You will not be able to make a Yaşar Nuri story out of me," he is not even aware that he is speaking from a pitch-dark place far beyond him by many leagues.

He is after a liberationist theology, but has no tolerance for another's criticism. He claims historicism, but has no idea within which circle of history he is, kneaded with which ideological doughs. He will develop a protest theology, but for this he has neither a suitable tradition, nor a suitable society, nor an awareness of the tradition in which he is situated. I entrust his sorry state to the analogy that Nietzche drew for those who claim objective history.